Zentropa

Zentropa or Zentropa Entertainments is a Danish film company started in 1992 by director Lars von Trier and producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen.

It has produced over 70 feature films and has become the largest film production company in Scandinavia. It owns a number of subsidiary companies in Europe.

Zentropa may be best known for creating the Dogme 95 movement, leading to such acclaimed films as Idioterne (1998), Festen (1998) and Mifunes sidste sang (1999).

It was the first mainstream film company to produce hardcore pornographic films for women: Constance (1998), Pink Prison (1999), HotMen CoolBoyz (2000) and the adult/mainstream crossover feature All About Anna (2005).

Zentropa is also responsible for creating a large studio complex called Filmbyen (Film City), where both Zentropa and many other film-related companies are located.

Zentropa is named from the train company Zentropa in the film Europa (1991), which started the collaboration between Lars von Trier and Peter Aalbæk Jensen.

Selected productions

Europa (film)

Europa (Zentropa in North America) is a 1991 Danish drama art film directed by Lars von Trier. It is von Trier's third theatrical feature film and the final film in his Europa trilogy following The Element of Crime (1984) and Epidemic (1987).

The film features an international cast, including the French-American Jean-Marc Barr, Germans Barbara Sukowa and Udo Kier, expatriate American Eddie Constantine, and the Swedes Max von Sydow and Ernst-Hugo Järegård.

Europa was influenced by Franz Kafka's Amerika, and the name of the film was chosen "as an echo" of that novel.

Plot

A young, idealistic American hopes to "show some kindness" to the German people soon after the end of World War II. In US-occupied Germany, he takes on work as a sleeping car conductor for the Zentropa railway network, falls in love with a femme fatale, and becomes embroiled in a pro-Nazi terrorist conspiracy.

Cast